The Athenian Adonia in Context

Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-299-30824-7
Verlag: The University of Wisconsin Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 381 g

Reihe: Wisconsin Studies in Classics

Ancient sources and modern scholars have often represented the Athenian festival of Adonis as a marginal and faintly ridiculous private women's ritual. Seeds were planted each year in pots and, once sprouted, carried to the rooftops, where women lamented the death of Aphrodite's youthful consort Adonis. Laurialan Reitzammer resourcefully examines a wide array of surviving evidence about the Adonia, arguing for its symbolic importance in fifth- and fourth-century Athenian culture as an occasion for gendered commentary on mainstream Athenian practices.

Reitzammer uncovers correlations of the Adonia to Athenian wedding rituals and civic funeral oration and provides illuminating evidence that the festival was a significant cultural template for such diverse works as Aristophanes' drama Lysistrata and Plato's dialogue Phaedrus. Her fresh approach offers a timely contribution to studies of the ways gender and sexuality intersect with religion and ritual in ancient Greece.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reitzammer, Laurialan

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments Abbreviations and References
- Introduction
- 1 Adonis and the Adonia: Trends in Representation, Ancient and Modern
- 2 Weddings: Stairway to Heaven
- 3 Funerals: Aristophanes's Adôniazousai
- 4 Philosophy: Gardening for Fun in Plato's Phaedrus
- Conclusion
- Figures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Laurialan Reitzammer is an assistant professor of classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.